DnB composition

[andi_e]

Hello everyone,

I was wondering what sort of composition DnB has, in terms of time signature etc. I'm guessing it's a pretty simple time signature (i.e. 4/4) and the BPM is about 160-180?

Cheers, A

p.s. hope i chose the right forum for this!

[elektro80]

Sure, this is the right forum for that.

I don´t know much about dnb myself, but I´m sure some of the experts will discover your post soon.

[Antimon]

Drum 'n' Bass? I think you usually can count 1-2-3-4 along with the beats, so 4/4 sounds ok, even though the cut up nature maybe can mess up the signature here and there. My "All Music Guide to Electronica" describes DnB as an umbrella concept encompassing Jungle and Hardcore Techno (among others), which means that the BPM can vary greatly. Jungle gets up to dizzying speeds - sometimes over 200 bpm I think. Some DnB sounds fast due to frantic breaking, but when listening more closely to the background pace it feels like is at a normal pop song tempo at 120-140 bpm.

My subjective opinion.

/Stefan

[play]

Messing with that doubletime/halftime emphasis is one of the things I like a lot about drum n bass. In jungle or hard step, lots of tracks are about double the tempo of what you normally get for hiphop. DJ's and producers will often build up a complex rythm and then drop to half tempo with a hip hop beat to set up the beat drop again. And usually in jungle and hard drum and bass the bassline tempo is half that of the breaks which is part of the now classic drum and bass sound. Contrast this with squarepusher and friends breaks which have fast, intricate bass lines. His style is more a descendant of fusion jazz than hip-hop but is still sort of in the drum n bass category.

[dannylake]

i used to be a complete drum and bass head, dj mc and produce its a 4/4 beat, 165-180 bpm. it can be anything that matches those bpm`s or anything that goes along with half that tempo (quite versatile i hear you add). trippy noises fat bass and different beats. construct the beats slowly.and keep it progressing. or just have fat drops. gd luck my freind.

[martay]

drum and bass is the greatest and everyone should have a go at producing and mixing it

my tunes-- http://www.esnips.com/web/KRANG?docsPage=1#files

[disablek]

Tech step's pretty simple stuff rhythmically. It's all just 4/4. The interesting bits are from stuff like early photek. You could also try simply just cutting out the different steps to something like the amen break and just reconstituting them back together.

[andi_e]

Cheers guys. I gave up on darkstep until i'm more experienced, for now i'm concentrating on electronica and experimenting with liquid dnb...